Fifty Sentences: Friends and Family Edition
by Sekhem
Summary: A continuation to the first five sets of fifty sentences, only without the romance. After a long hiatus, Maes Hughes and his adorable daughter Elysia get their turn under the microscope.
1. Edward and Alphonse

Since my last feature, _Fifty Sentences_, was such a hit, I'm doing a second edition. It's a similar challenge, but this time I'm staying away from the romance and focusing on family and friendships.

I'm still not Hiromu Arakawa, so all characters and situations relating to Fullmetal Alchemist still aren't mine and belong to their respective owners.

Once again, if any of these sentences give you a story idea, go ahead and run with it. But if you do write something around it, let me know so I can link to you on my profile page.

As always, reviews are welcomed and cherished, and flames are directed to the appropriate alchemist.

And now, without further ado, I give you my first pair of victims:

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Edward and Alphonse Elric

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001. Love

The crime they committed was motivated by love; all they'd ever wanted was to see their mother's smile one more time.

002. Hate

Trisha hated to tell Edward that he couldn't keep the kitten, but Alphonse's allergies made that impossible.

003. Pain

Alphonse knew that Aunt Pinako had said that Edward would spit blood while he was learning how to handle his automail, but he just hadn't realized the reality would be so terrifying.

004. Joy

Izumi wouldn't have taken on another student after her dealings with Edward and Alphonse, even if she'd been well enough to do so; they took a delight in their study of alchemy that she had nearly forgotten existed, and she wouldn't have soured that memory for anything in the world.

005. Fear

When Alphonse ran off, Edward took it as a sign that all of his worst fears were true.

006. Trust

Edward knew that his brother trusted him to find the Stone and get their own bodies back; he just wished he had that kind of faith in himself.

007. Betray

Looking back on the night they tried to bring their mother back, Ed always felt that he'd committed the worst kind of treason against his family; his brother lost his body, and his mother had to die a second time.

008. Promise

Izumi saw the same determination in Alphonse's eyes as she had so many years ago, though she knew she wouldn't live long enough to see him fulfill his vow to find his brother.

009. Appreciate

For the nine years he'd had a brother, he had taken Alphonse for granted; it wasn't until he nearly lost him that Edward truly appreciated him.

010. Annoy

It had taken Edward a while to adjust to having a little brother; there were times he thought that his parents had had Alphonse just to annoy him.

011. Death

Noa had seen both their pasts, and she knew that death followed in their wake, though they had never done anything to invite it.

012. Blood

The sight of all that blood terrified Alphonse even more than what had happened to him, but it didn't stop him from grabbing Edward and going for help.

013. Grave

As he and Winry watched over Edward the first night after they'd tried to bring their mother back, Alphonse prayed he wouldn't end up burying the only family he had left.

014. Life

Helping to bring Elysia into the world had blown both brothers away; they knew intellectually that life began that way, but to actually see it happen was another thing entirely.

015. Breath

As Alphonse listened to his brother rant about Mustang, he had to wonder whether Edward was going to stop and take a breath, or pass out from lack of oxygen.

016. Mind

It wasn't that Edward didn't like cats - under normal circumstances he wouldn't have minded adopting a couple of them - but they traveled so much that they just weren't able to properly look after one.

017. Think

Roy Mustang wasn't sure what pissed him off more as he got to know the Elric brothers - that those two boys had attempted human transmutation in the first place, or that they hadn't bothered to think through the consequences.

018. Share

Ed had never quite learned how to share with his brother; that was why they'd fought over so many things for so long.

019. Toy

The first time he and Alphonse ever transmuted a doll for Winry, it scared the living daylights out of her; she hadn't known that alchemy looked like that.

020. Guard

Edward and Alphonse Elric had been alone against the world for so long that Maria Ross sometimes wondered if they'd forgotten they could ask for help.

021. Moonlight

Winry's favorite memories of growing up were the warm summer nights that her grandmother let her and Edward and Alphonse stay up late and chase the fireflies in the yard.

022. Sunshine

Ever since his soul had been sealed in armor, the one sensation that Alphonse found he missed the most was the feel of the sun on his face on a hot summer day.

023. Wish

Elysia Hughes had grown up hearing as many stories about the Elric brothers as she had about her father; she just wished she had been old enough to get to know them.

024. Undecided

Alphonse still hadn't made up his mind what he thought of the Gypsy girl, Noa, but, though she was no Winry Rockbell, it was obvious that Ed liked her.

025. Heaven

The long-ago days of their childhood weren't nearly as simple as either of them remembered, but both brothers couldn't help remembering them as something close to paradise in comparison to their current lives.

026. Dispose

Pinako buried the poor creature that Edward and Alphonse had transmuted before either one ever had a chance to go back to their house; she saw no reason for them to have to bury their mother a second time.

027. Illusive

Until they started reading and deciphering Shou Tucker's notebooks, the Philosopher's Stone had seemed as illusory as a desert mirage.

028. Inside

Al's decision to allow only women and cats into his armor disappointed Edward, he knew that much, but his brother would just have to learn to buy his own movie tickets.

029. Home

There were times Alphonse wondered when he and Ed had started to think of Eastern Headquarters as home, and whether that made the people he and his brother worked with family.

030. Sleep

The children had been playing together all afternoon, and when Pinako found her granddaughter curled up in a heap with Den and the Elric brothers, she shook her head and called Trisha to let her know the boys were staying for dinner.

031. Phone

Winry learned to dread hearing the telephone ring; every time Edward and Alphonse called, they were either both in pieces, or Edward had nearly been killed.

032. Discover

When Winry found out that Edward and Alphonse were fighting over which of them would marry her, she turned them both down flat; she wasn't interested in marriage yet, and they were too short, besides.

033. Investigate

The boys never knew that although half the missions Mustang sent them on were meant to distract the local authorities from his own activities, the other half were genuine leads.

034. Confide

It wasn't so much that Ed and Alphonse wouldn't tell her anything about what was going on that upset her, as it was the fear that they didn't need her anymore.

035. Follow

After a while, Mustang found that it was easy to track Edward and Alphonse's path through the country; all he had to do was follow the path of chaos and destruction they left in their path.

036. Threat

When both brothers came home from Central in pieces, Winry put them back together again and informed them that if they ever scared her like that again, she would kill them slowly and painfully; neither Edward nor Alphonse had the courage to argue with her.

037. Survive

Edward and Alphonse had both seen the armor in their father's old workshop so often they'd nearly forgotten it was there; they never dreamed they'd need it for survival.

038. Together

As strange as this new world was that he had come to, Alphonse knew that he and his brother would be okay; they were stronger together than they were apart.

039. Remember

When her son asked for the story about the two brothers and the phony priest, Rose took a deep breath, gathered her memories, and began the tale as she always did: "Once upon a time there were two brothers, one named Edward and the other named Alphonse..."

040. Mistake

Edward knew that people underestimated his little brother all the time; while he may have been the better alchemist, Alphonse was the better fighter.

041. Try

There were times it was easy to assume that Alphonse was the elder of the two brothers; he maintained a level head, where Edward went out of his way to try the patience of nearly everyone around him.

042. Fall

When Edward slipped on the ice, Furey made the mistake of pointing out that he hadn't had that far to fall; the only reason he survived was that Alphonse had managed to restrain Edward in time.

043. Redo

If Edward had had that night to do over again, he would have at least double-checked their equations; maybe then he'd have caught their error.

044. Experiment

Human transmutation was a project that did not allow for experimentation; Edward and Alphonse had learned that much the hard way.

045. Hollow

The armor that housed Alphonse's soul may have been hollow, but anyone who knew him knew he had a heart as big as all outdoors.

046. Missing

When both Elric brothers went MIA after the invasion, Mustang kept the file on their disappearance open until he was forced to close it; he wouldn't believe they were dead until they found their bodies.

047. Broken

After Ed broke his arm when they fell out of the tree, Alphonse ran screaming to their Aunt Pinako's house, terrified that he'd accidentally killed his brother.

048. Sympathy

Edward and Alphonse learned early on to never try the sympathy ploy with their teacher; she was way too smart to not know if they were faking.

049. Collide

The car accident, even at a slow speed, had not been a good experience for any of them; Ed and the colonel's arguing about Ed's driving had nearly gotten them both killed, and Alphonse had a surprising low threshhold for terror.

050. Writers' Choice: Envy

He had resented his younger half-brothers from the moment he learned of their existence because they had what he had always wanted - a family who loved them, and the attention of their father, even if it had been only for a little while.


	2. Hughes and Mustang

Sorry it took so long. Oddly enough this was a very hard pairing to write...especially since there's been so much already written about these two...and writer's block hit hard.

For those of you who follow my Three of a Kind series, don't worry. I haven't abandoned it. I have several pieces written, but I got stuck on the fourth story. That one is almost done, and will probably be up in the next couple of days.

As always, I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, and all associated characters and situations belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I'm just borrowing the boys for a little while, and I'll send them home unharmed.

And, again, I welcome any feedback you're willing to send my way. Thanks for reading.

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Roy Mustang and Maes Hughes

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001. Spiral

It broke Gracia's heart to witness Roy's downward spiral into despair after the Fuhrer's assassinantion, but what hurt the most was knowing that Maes would most likely have been the only one who could pull him out of it.

002. Ghost

There were times even in his later years that Roy still half-expected to see his friend come through the door, bragging about his family or with some bit of news he just had to share; only then would he realize he was gone.

003. Control

The first time Maes tried throwing knives at a live target, Roy walked away with a reverse-Mohawk and his life; Maes himself walked away with a black eye.

004. Bruise

By the time Maes was done cleaning up the transmutation circles and putting away Roy's books and notes, the only signs that anything had been wrong were the bruises on their faces from when they'd fought.

005. Destiny

After the war ended, they believed that it was their destiny to take the reins of power and change the way things worked in Amestris; they never dreamed it would end with one of them dead and the other in disgrace.

006. Element

As strange as it seemed, there were times when Maes could see reflections of himself in Roy's dealings with Edward; apparently Roy had it in him to be a good father, after all.

007. Fade

The shadow in the corner of his sickroom held the form of Maes Hughes for only a few seconds, then faded away, leaving Roy wondering if he were still dreaming or if his eye was playing tricks on him.

008. Darkness

After she met Maes and Roy, Gracia spent a lot of time short on sleep; most of the pranks she was in on were set up and executed under cover of darkness.

009. Fire

Roy's alchemy scared Maes sometmes; that his friend would either literally or figuratively go up in flames had been one of his worst nightmares since he found out that Roy had studied fire alchemy.

010. Blood

As different as the two of them were, it still amazed Gracia sometimes that that they were brothers in all but blood.

011. Bound

Gracia laughed when she saw her would-be molester hanging upside down naked from the flagpole; Maes and Roy had taken a very thorough vengeance on her behalf, and she couldn't have loved them more for it.

012. Bolt

When the piano hit the ground and Gracia hit the rosebushes, Roy's first instinct was to turn tail and flee, but Maes insisted on staying and at least helping Gracia.

013. Wormhole

Maes wondered at first why Roy had suddenly dropped the apple and fled the room with one hand clapped over his mouth; it wasn't until he examined the piece of fruit and saw the hole with half a worm still in it that he understood.

014. Sacrifice

Roy knew that he would have to make sacrifices in his quest to become Fuehrer, but, dammit, did he really have to give up his best friend?

015. Pause

Ed deliberately stopped by to drop off his report when he knew Mustang would be gone, and it was only then that he noticed that the only picture Mustang had on his desk was of Lt. Col. Hughes and his family.

016. Space

The physical distance brought about by their different assignments didn't change their friendship in the least; they just wrote a lot of letters and talked on the phone more than they used to.

017. Doubt

When Roy saw how Maes was with his new girlfriend, he had no doubt in his mind that the two of them would end up together, and hoped they would invite him to the wedding.

018. Ashes

"You know, it took me three days to type this," Maes said, his voice deceptively calm as he regarded the pile of ash that had once been his military law term paper.

019. Save

The first time Roy Mustang took the State Alchemist exam and failed, he nearly died of alcohol poisoning, and the only reason he didn't was that Maes found him in time.

020. Write

Both Maes and Roy had written Gracia long letters telling her about life at the front lines; she didn't start to worry until the letters stopped coming.

021. Insult

It was bad enough that Roy had stolen his camera, but did he really have to add the insult to injury by recruiting Elysia to his side in the prank war?

022. Dare

After she started hanging out with Hughes and Mustang, Gracia found herself taking chances she never would have under normal circumstances, and having a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

023. Morph

As the thing that called itself Envy bragged about having killed his best friend, Roy knew that the only way he would ever be able to live with himself would be to make sure it died by his hand.

024. Heal

In a way, Gracia thought that Roy's attempt at assassinating the Fuhrer was the best possible thing he could have done; maybe then he would let himself mourn and move on.

025. Burden

Roy hadn't wanted to be a burden to his friends after he came home from the war, but soon found that it was impossible for him to withdraw completely; Maes kept trying to drag him back to humanity.

026. Gate

Edward's reaction to Father Mustang had confused Maes at first, but after Alphonse started telling stories about his and the priest's counterparts in Shamballa, it made sense.

027. Travel

Roy knew that his friend was reluctant to travel, considering that he had a pregnant wife at home, but Maes was the best choice for the mission, and to meet the Elrics when they got on board the train.

028. Cage

"Do I even want to know how you got here?" Gracia asked as she looked at the two of them through the bars of their jail cell.

029. Wake

When they roomed together at the academy, Maes had been more than tempted to murder Roy on a regular basis; he hadn't realized until then that his old friend was an unashamed morning person.

030. Seed

The seeds of their friendship began when they both came to the rescue of a girl who was being hounded by the local bullies, then endured the humiliation of getting yelled at for their heroism.

031. Ring

For Roy, the most terrifying moment of the wedding came when he forgot what pocket he'd put Gracia's ring in.

032. Karma

Maes always knew that his friend's actions in Ishbal would come back to bite him in the ass, but he never dreamed they would come in the form of a girl he could easily have claimed as a daughter.

033. Traitor

It was one thing to commit treason against his country; his betrayal of his best friend was worse, simply because he hadn't wanted to take that final phone call.

034. Stars

One of his favorite things to do when they were young was to sit on the roof of Maes's house, watch the stars and make plans for the future; he never realized how much he would come to miss that as he got older.

035. Voice

Twenty years later, Elysia abruptly stopped what she was doing and burst into tears when she realized she knew her uncle's voice better than she did her own father's.

036. Backwards

The more Riza listened to Gracia's stories about knowing Roy Mustang and Maes Hughes when they were in school, the more she respected her; not only was she able to keep up with them, she was able to do it backwards and in high heels, at that.

037. Present

Roy grumbled for a week after he got the invitation to Elysia's birthday, but when the day came, he arrived with a stuffed bear as big as she was and a card for his favorite neice; Maes made sure the occasion was very well-documented.

038. Salvation

There were times that Gracia thought her husband's friendship with Roy was Roy's salvation; he'd been alarmingly close to suicide after he'd come home from Ishbal.

039. Restrain

The hard part had not been coming up with the plan, or figuring out how to do it, but in keeping a straight face when the academy commandant demanded to know how the herd of goats got into his office.

040. Myth

The myth of Hughes and Mustang loomed large in the military academy's lore for years after they graduated; nearly two decades had passed before anyone else matched them.

041. Hologram

The hologram, originally a picture taken with an antique film camera, was of two young men in old-fashioned army uniforms - one beaming at the camera, about to toss his hat in the air, and the other doing his best to look very serious and dignified - and she wondered what had ever become of them.

042. Reaction

When Maes found out that Roy had sent Edward and Alphonse to go through Shou Tucker's research, he was fully prepared to knock his best friend upside the head for making those boys do that, until he found out that Roy had been beating himself up over it for the past two hours.

043. Alien

Solitude, Roy soon learned, was alien to his new friend's nature, and more and more often, he found himself being pulled away from his books and homework to go adventuring.

044. Burn

The first time Roy tried lighting a cigarette using nothing but alchemy, Maes, his lucky near-victim, counted himself lucky to walk away with his eyebrows intact and the equivalent of a bad sunburn.

045. Brave

Most people would have thought him brave for tangling with the shape-shifter, but Maes cursed himself for a fool, and silently apologized to his wife, his daughter, and his brother for letting them down.

046. Necklace

Roy noticed that a few days after the funeral, Gracia started wearing a ring that was too big for her on a chain around her neck, and he couldn't quite bring himself to look her in the eye.

047. Creation

"It's interesting, Roy, but is it edible?" Maes said as he picked at the lump of charcoal that was Roy's first attempt at cooking with fire alchemy.

048. Guilt

In her darker moments, Elysia would wonder if the only reason her Uncle Roy watched over her and her mother so closely was that he felt guilty for taking her father away from them.

049. Reality

It wasn't until he got to the crime scene and actually saw the body lying against the wall of the phone booth in a pool of blood that the reality finally sank in.

050. Writers' Choice: Conspiracy

After Riza caught the bouquet, and he caught the garter, Roy knew for a fact that his two best friends had set them up.


	3. Fullmetal and Flame

Sorry I was so late getting this out. My modem flipped out the night before I was gong to finally post this. Fortunately, I've replaced it, and the new one works better than the old.

As always, I'm still not Hiromu Arakawa, so none of these characters belong to me. I'm just borrowing them for a little while, and I promise to return them in approximately the same condition they were when I took them.

For those of you who are still (I hope...!) wondering about Three of a Kind, don't worry. I've finished the story, and it should be up tomorrow, barring anything weird happening.

Please review. I'm a writer, and I thrive on feedback.

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Roy Mustang and Edward Elric

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001. Heart

Edward had often thought that his commanding officer had no heart; it wasn't until after Mustang and his men cornered him and Al outside of Resembool that he learned otherwise.

002. Stone

As Edward looked down from the top of the stone cannon, it never occured to him to wonder why Mustang was smirking at him instead of running for his life, the way he was supposed to.

003. Cold

If Edward hadn't been part of the military, Roy would have offered the boy something more than cold words about duty and honor after Nina Tucker's murder; for the first time, he started to regret having brought the boy into the State Alchemist Program.

004. Hole

In a strange way, they filled a hole in each others' lives that neither had realized was even there.

005. Cut

Edward knew in his bones that the colonel's reference to a shortcut was an indirect reference to his height, but he had to admit he did get there faster.

006. Queue

There was a long line of people whose asses Edward needed to kick, and nine times out of ten, Colonel Mustang's name was near the top of the list.

007. Turn

There was no such thing as a turn in real combat conditions, and he would do Edward no favor during their duel in letting him continue to think that.

008. Apathy

For all his feigned apathy towards the Elric brothers, he watched over them as closely as if they had been his own children.

009. Innocence

The wide-eyed innocent expression was one that suited neither Flame nor Fullmetal, but Hawkeye thought that it looked better on Edward.

010. Stay

The Fullmetal Alchemist and his brother were both held up as true champions of the people and heroes to the common man in the years and decades after they disappeared; Roy often wondered what would have happened if they had chosen to stay in Amestris.

011. Drunk

Edward would have preferred to have lost his other arm and leg than admit it, but in the weeks after Lt. Col. Hughes' murder, he worried about Mustang; rumor had it the man had spent two nights out of every five either drunk, brooding, or both.

012. Attitude

Hawkeye thought that the boy in the wheelchair was broken beyond repair, but she hadn't seen what he had - a boy who would give the world as good as he got, and damn the consequences.

013. Rational

"Of course his decisions when it comes to Ed and Alphonse aren't rational," Maes Hughes was once heard to say, "they are his kids...after a fashion."

014. Possible

When he and Riza found the mess at the Elric home, his first thought was that no one could have survived what had happened there; afterwards, he was grateful to have been wrong.

015. Temperature

During the worst of his fever, Edward had thought that his father had been there, telling him that everything would be all right; Alphonse never told him that Colonel Mustang had sat with him the entire time.

016. Goodbye

Until the day he died, Edward would hold a grudge against Mustang for not telling them that Hughes was dead; he never got a chance to say goodbye.

017. Hero

As the two of them said their final goodbyes, Roy couldn't help but wonder when that badly maimed child from so long ago had turned into a hero.

018. Point

Edward never saw the purpose of his coming in to personally give Mustang his reports; the colonel would be sarcastic and make short jokes, and he would invariably lose his temper.

019. Try

"Sir, you could at least attempt to get along with Fullmetal," Lt. Hawkeye sighed as the two of them watched the boy storm out of the office and slam the door hard enough to rattle the windows.

020. Dinner

After a disastrous evening, he made a mental note never to take the Elric boys out to dinner again; Alphonse couldn't eat, and Edward had the metabolism of a coal stove and the manners of a drunken longshoreman.

021. Scar

The battle with Scar had nearly cost both himself and the Elric brothers their lives, but he put off the case of the shakes he knew would be coming until he was safely back in his apartment.

022. Perfect

The impromptu rematch of Fullmetal vs. Flame only confirmed what Riza had known for weeks - that Edward and the colonel had perfected the fine art of driving each other berserk, and that if she didn't intervene, the two of them would kill themselves and any innocent bystanders who got caught in the crossfire.

023. Solution

It had seemed the perfect answer at the time - Al's cat got a home, they got the information they needed, and he got to wipe that damn smirk off of Mustang's face - but after hearing what the colonel had to say, it didn't seem that fair, after all.

024. Science

Despite his youth, Edward was as much a scientist as he was, and he regretted never getting to argue theories of alchemy with him.

025. Proud

When they said their final farewells, he couldn't help but be proud of the young man Edward had become, and that he had played a part in it.

026. Pretend

"Tell you what, Fullmetal," the colonel said, "let's pretend that I'm your commanding officer, you're my subordinate, and you'll follow orders for once."

027. Late

Edward never realized that every time he showed up late, every time he didn't check in when he was supposed to, Roy would always start to fear the worst.

028. Forever

After he had run into the second, fourth, and ninth things the colonel had neglected to warn him about, and the seventh tried to eat him, Edward decided to kill Mustang in such a way that it would take him an eternity to die.

029. Defend

Edward knew that something had happened to the colonel during the last few seconds of their duel; Mustang would never have let him get that close with his blade otherwise.

030. Gone

When it was clear that the Elric brothers weren't coming back after the invasion, Roy went to tell Winry himself; it was the very least he owed her, after all.

031. Determined

Edward Elric was one who would move worlds, given even half a chance, and Roy was determined to be the one who showed him where to put the lever.

032. Abducted

Looking back on it, Roy wasn't sure what he found more disturbing - that the kidnappers thought that Edward was his son, or that he found himself not minding the idea once he got past the teasing.

033. Communication

For all the insults and all the bluster from both of them, Havoc knew that things would never come to blows between Ed and the colonel; it was just the way they communicated.

034. Disguise

Edward had dyed his hair brown and donned the rags of a Liore refugee; if it hadn't been for his gold eyes, Mustang would never have recognized him.

035. Drugged

When the nurse told him that his parents had arrived at the hospital to take charge of him, he half-expected to see Hohenheim and his mother appear; when Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye came through the door, he'd have laughed if only he had the strength.

036. Tragedy

The real tragedy, Roy thought, was that with Alphonse's memory gone, he would never know what his brother had done for him, or the part that he himself had played in the lives of the people around him.

037. Butterfly

He never asked that Fullmetal play the part of the social butterfly, but was it too much to request that the boy keep a civil tongue in his head?

038. Effect

Von Hohenheim had very briefly met the Flame Alchemist some years before, but never would have guessed that the boy would have such an effect on his sons' lives.

039. Design

If Edward had had any plans beyond finding the Philosopher's Stone and restoring himself and his brother, Roy wouldn't have had any problems with taking the boy on as a protege.

040. Substance

The report of the stone in Liore was the first solid lead on anything even resembling a Philosopher's Stone the boys had had in three years; Roy hoped for their sake that it was the real thing.

041. Smoke

Where the was smoke there was Flame, and when the fire department was overwhelmed by the inferno, he and Fullmetal were there helping to pull the survivors out of the building.

042. Paranormal

Ed flatly refused to believe in anything he couldn't logically explain, but that was only part of the reason he never told Mustang that he had seen Lt. Col. Hughes on a railway platform miles away from Central the day after his murder.

043. Spooky

When Ed finally set pen to paper and started writing about his time as a State Alchemist, he never dreamed that the Flame Colonel's eerie yet maddening ability to know everything his youngest subordinate was doing would make him one of the most popular characters in the story.

044. Spy

At first, Edward seemed ideal for ferreting out the information Roy needed for his own operations, because who would have suspected a kid would know anything about military operations or espionage?

045. Morph

Envy was sure the little brat had broken his jaw, and reluctantly agreed with his younger half-brother that he should never have taken on the Flame Alchemist's form during their final battle.

046. Pulse

Edward had been raised by and around very strong women, so when he saw Mustang throwing himself at anything female, just so long as it was pretty and had a heartbeat, he found he had even less reason to like the man.

047. Dare

Ed and the colonel fell asleep leaning against each other while they were waiting for their ride back to headquarters; if either of them had been awake, Alphonse wouldn't have dared to take the picture.

048. Whisper

Edward had never spoken to his wife and children of his life before he'd come to this new world, so his grandchildren never knew who people were that he called for as he was dying, nor why he called for a bastard colonel.

049. Insecure

Edward had always been terribly insecure about his height; that was why Roy always delighted in teasing him about it.

050. Writers' Choice: Continuity

As they listened with bemusement as Father Mustang ranted about his plans for his reign as pope, Edward simply smiled, shook his head, and said, "I guess some things never change, do they?"

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: #50 is for Phoenix-Fire Power, who was curious about Father Mustang. He followed a different path than the Flame Alchemist did, but the ambition is still there. For those of you who are looking at this and going "Huh?", my first reference to Father Mustang was in the Fifty Sentence set I did for Hughes and Gracia in 1923 Munich, and he was the priest who married them. From therein, he just kep popping up.


	4. Hohenheim and Pinako

Neither the manga or anime really go into much detail about Hohenheim and Pinako's history together. They've been friends and drinking buddies since Pinako was young, and she was the one who introduced him to Trisha, but that's really all we know. The rest is pure speculation, which is why this was another one that was long and hard in the writing. I even got to a point where I put it down and walked away for a while, but here it is, at long last.

As always, I'm only borrowing the characters and situations from their rightful owner, Hiromu Arakawa. I'll return them unharmed in the morning.

This section is dedicated to Tammy, who got me to wondering just what those two were like.

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Hohenheim Elric and Pinako Rockbell

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001. Finish

She had won far too many hands of poker for his peace of mind, so when the card sharp sitting across from her called for a new deck, he took the opportunity to grab her by the arm and yank her out of there before anything could happen.

002. Nothing

As the two of them traveled together, she soon learned that he would keep things bottled up, insisting all the while that nothing was wrong, until he would finally explode.

003. Alone

He had seen everyone he knew and loved grow old and die, and knew that she would, too, but there was still no harm in having fun in the meantime.

004. Desperate

He was not averse to the occasional cigarette, but he would have to be in truly dire straits to smoke whatever the hell it was she put in that pipe of hers.

005. Down

He never told her quite was in the mixture he'd given her patient, but it had brought the man's fever down faster than anything she'd ever used.

006. Tongue

She started laughing hysterically, and he turned red as a beet when the Drachman gentleman said he was a cunning linguist; they both thought he'd said something else entirely.

007. Hair

She was a beautiful blue-eyed blonde with hair down to her waist, and nobody would have dreamed that she had a reputation as a hellraiser.

008. Kiss

She tried kissing him exactly one time and vowed never again; it felt too much like she was kissing her brother.

009. Smile

Winry smiled at him the first time he held her, and, even if he hadn't been there when she was born, he'd have still known she was his old friend's granddaughter; she looked just like her.

010. Imagine

He was never quite sure just what she did that put the fear of the gods into Dominic, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know, but his imagination was painting some fairly vivid pictures and none of them were pretty.

011. Defy

She knew very little about alchemy, but his ability to transmute things simply by putting his hands together defied everything she'd ever read about the subject.

012. Notice

If he had stayed to see his sons grow up, he would have noticed, and probably laughed at, the similarities between the two of them and Edward and Winry.

013. Celebrate

That his son had been born healthy was cause enough to celebrate, but despite both her and Trisha's reassurances all through the pregnancy, he'd been terrified that Edward would be born a monster.

014. Morgue

Most people her age would sneak their male acquaintances into the morgue because it was a kinky place to have sex; they snuck in because she wanted to examine the body with the automail legs.

015. Charm

If he overlooked her nasty temper, gods-awful pipe, and her ability to strike mortal terror into the hearts of the people who pissed her off, he found she could be a very charming woman when she wanted to be.

016. Bath

Giving that dog a bath was not one of his brighter ideas; by the time they were done, they were both soaked to the bone, and he had paw prints in places he hadn't known he had from where it kept pouncing him.

017. Dance

He had danced with her at her wedding, but regretted that she had never gotten the chance to dance with him at his.

018. Scream

They had been telling tall tales about their adventures for a good hour when her granddaughter Winry suddenly screamed and started hitting his son Edward over the head with her favorite toy wrench.

019. Kick

She lay his hand across her swollen belly, and he was amazed to feel a tiny, fluttering kick from inside.

020. Feel

It took a lot of arguing on his part, but he managed to convince her that no parent who cared anything at all about their child would ever saddle the little one with a name like his.

021. Stutter

He had never been the smoothest of operators, but she'd still had to laugh when he started tripping over his own tongue the first time he laid eyes on Trisha.

022. Learn

He knew more about medicine than the average layman, but there were times when she was afraid to guess just how he had acquired that knowledge.

023. Fight

They were on opposite sides of a bar fight when they met, so it was quite understandable that she had broken a bottle over his head before they'd even been properly introduced.

024. Steal

There was glass in his hair, his scalp was bleeding, and he was reasonably sure he had a concussion, so when the little blonde who'd hit him with the bottle of whiskey grabbed him by the arm and snuck out the back with him while the cops came in the front, he didn't bother to argue with her.

025. Fascinate

He once tried to explain to her just why alchemy fascinated him the way it did, but, although she understood the science behind it, the whole business still gave her a headache.

026. Forget

When they traveled toether he found that he was able to, just for a little while, forget what he was and what he had done, and let himself live in the moment.

027. Hurt

She knew she should be grateful that he had escaped the avalanche with his life, but as she looked at the broken, half-frozen figure of her friend, she found it hard to summon gratitude of any kind.

028. Never

He knew she'd had more than her fair share of lovers in her time, but he had never dreamed that she would ever get married, much less start a family.

029. Close

Their families had always been close, so his not being there when her son and his wife died hurt almost as badly as the pain of her and Winry's losses.

030. Fade

She'd been talking about one of the gorier operations she'd had a chance to observe, when the world suddenly faded to black around him; she later teased him mercilessly about his having fainted.

031. Direction

His alleged shortcut took them miles out of their way, and she cursed him with every step for having not stopped to ask directions.

032. Road

He'd struck her at first as being the sort of gentleman who couldn't survive outside the ivory towers of academia, but after she'd gotten to know him, she found he was just as at home sleeping under the stars and living out of a backpack as she was.

033. Question

He was the first one she told after her husband-to-be asked her to marry him.

034. Between

He'd been stuck between her and another automail mechanic for the past two hours, and was halfway hoping that Dante would show up and try to kill him before he drowned in the technobabble.

035. Trap

When the snare left him hanging from a tree branch by one leg, she laughed and went to get help, while he struggled to free himself and called her everything in the book and then some.

036. Dress

Until the day he came home and found his house burned to the ground, the only time he had ever seen her in a dress was the day she got married.

037. Admit

There were times that Edward reminded her so much of her old friend that it was almost painful, but if she'd said anything, the boy would never admit he could be anything at all like his father.

038. Chance

It was only by chance that they found the ruins of the city that had died in a night, but while she was all up for solving the mystery, he only wanted to get the hell out of there.

039. Believe

When he identified himself once as being a Christian, she didn't know at first what he was talking about, and the few hours of research she put in later didn't clarify things any; why anyone would subscribe to a 400 years-dead religion was beyond her.

040. Dream

She had heard him cry out in his sleep more than once while they were on the road, but he never told her what his nightmares were about, and she never asked.

041. Shine

She worked straight through the night and well into the wee hours of the morning, and was dead on her feet the next day, but her work outshone everything else at the automail expo.

042. Tied

Her hands were surprisingly gentle as she brushed the snarls out of his hair, and by the time she'd tied off his braid, he was practically purring, much to her amusement.

043. Conspire

He and Trisha hit it off almost immediately, and she couldn't have been more pleased; she and her own husband had been plotting to find him a wife for years now.

044. Couple

They had never been romantically conntected, but the automail otaku and the alchemy geek had hung out together for years and been best friends for most of them.

045. Undercover

She didn't know until years later that he had been posing as a young man for the entire time she'd known him.

046. Care

She should have known it was him when Den started snarling at their visitor; animals had never liked him much.

047. Creep

The drunken miner who tried to cop a feel thought that he was the one to worry about; the lug wrench to the privates the moment after he grabbed her taught him otherwise.

048. Empty

When she asked him why on earth he kept that antique suit of armor in his workroom, he laughed and said it might come in handy someday.

049. Bones

When Trisha told her he was gone, Pinako knew in her bones that something was horribly wrong; he wasn't the type to just walk out on his wife and children like that.

050. Writers' Choice - Crush

He wanted to dig a hole and pull the dirt in after him after he said it, but instead of getting mad, she looked at him strangely, then asked, "So, exactly how long _have_ you had a crush on me?"

-0-

A/N: #42 was inspired by Crackbunny Syndrome's incredible story, _Balance of Power_. There's a scene in it where Ed gets his hair brushed and starts to purr before it's over. I couldn't resist the idea of Hohenheim reacting the same way.


	5. Maes and Elysia

Gah. At long last, the next chapter has been posted. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, considering just how much has been written about these two. I actually had to put it down and walk away for a while.

I didn't want this to be the usual thing of Hughes gushing about his daughter. I tried to capture the little moments between a father and daughter, but I'm not sure how well I did. Let me know.

As always, the FMA characters aren't mine, and if you want to drop me a review, feel free. I will respond if I can.

#

Maes and Elysia Hughes

#

001. Angel

She had wanted to dress up like an angel for Samhain, but when Gracia went to make it, she insisted that the dress be army blue, like what her daddy wore.

002. Reason

Elysia had her own reasons for wanting to join the military, but the people who didn't know her thought it was her way of honoring her father's memory.

003. Prank

Their first real father-daughter project was to steal Roy Mustang's ignition gloves, and was actually what caused the legendary prank war of Eastern Headquarters.

004. Caught

The light came on and they both instinctively froze as Gracia caught them both literally with their hands in the cookie jar.

005. Anxiety

He'd never told Gracia, but he'd worried about both her and the baby all through the pregnancy.

006. Rock

The first time he tried to rock her to sleep, she screamed bloody murder, and he was terrified that he'd broken her.

007. Hire

Gracia couldn't help but be annoyed as she watched him give the new babysitter the third degree, complete with the hot lights and vaguely threatening line of questioning.

008. I can't make you mine

Roy knew that if his old friend had lived long enough, he'd have wreaked havoc on his daughter's love life; he'd have been pleased to know that Roy was picking up the slack.

009. Race

Whenever she raced him somewhere when she was little, she always won; it wasn't until many years later that she realized he let her.

010. Heartbreaker

He knew that she would be a heartbreaker when she grew up, but god help any boy who tried to break hers, because nobody else would.

011. Language

She had never heard the words Daddy used when the bucket of water landed on his head, but she was willing to bet Mommy could tell her what they meant.

012. Wait

It had taken a solid month of her waiting for him to return home at his usual time for her to realize that he wasn't coming back.

013. Tongue-Tied

For one of the few times in his life he didn't know what to say when Gracia told him she wanted to name the baby after his sister, Elysia.

014. Crystal Clear

Gracia knew that the worst cases were usually the ones he couldn't talk about, but she could always tell by how he would hold her and Elysia close so they couldn't see the haunted look in his eyes.

015. Fraud

He was honestly proud of his wife and daughter, so it wasn't like he wouldn't have bragged about them anyway, but it did make it easier to play the fool when he had to.

016. Search

He spent an hour looking for her during the game of hide and go seek, and finally found her sleeping under an end table.

017. Apart

When her mother died, the last thing that went through her head before the grief hit her was that her parents were together again after so many years apart.

018. Personality

She was her own person and had her own way of looking at the world, even as young as she was, but he could still see shades of himself and Gracia there if he looked.

019. Orange

Her husband and daughter were covered with orange finger paint and grinning like fools, and when she wanted to know what had happened, they took one look at each other and burst out laughing.

020. Crawl

When she learned to crawl, it was a strangely bittersweet moment for him; it was the first step toward his little girl growing up and away from him and Gracia.

021. Alternate Reality

As he watched her exchange her wedding vows with her new husband, he couldn't help but wonder how his daughter could have grown up so fast without his noticing.

022. Downstairs

He hadn't had a problem watching her as she climbed upstairs by herself for the first time, but the ten minutes she spent climbing down the stairs were the most nerve-wracking he'd ever had in his life.

023. Pop

He was going to kill Roy Mustang for having introduced his child to bubble wrap, assuming Gracia didn't get him first.

024. Cliché

If she had been a boy, following in her father's footsteps would have been a cliche, but as it was, people did nothing but talk.

025. Memory

As she got older, she had to wonder how much of what she remembered about her father was her actual memories, and how much was stories that people had told her about him.

026. Bed

The nightly war over bedtime usually ended when he'd promise her an extra story before he turned the light off, though she was never awake to hear the end.

027. Needle In A Haystack

He would have thought that picking Elysia's voice out of the sea of people would be like finding a needle in a haystack, but Gracia was able to do it without a problem.

028. Shave

Gracia had remarked on it and off about it for weeks, but it was only after Elysia complained that he finally got the hint and shaved the beginnings of his beard off.

029. Whatever

Whatever it was Daddy was putting on the floors, it smelled like coffee, but it sure didn't look like it.

030. Guardian

He and Gracia had talked it over several times, and decided that if anything happened to them, Roy would be the one to take care of Elysia.

031. Infidelity

She knew intellectually that her mother might eventually meet somebody else and remarry, but when it finally happened, she couldn't help but feel like her mother was somehow betraying her father.

032. Fiction

The good guys always won and walked away unscathed, the bad guys were always left in smoking ruins, and the good people never died; it was a nice story, but she learned early on in life that it didn't really happen that way.

033. A New World

Entire worlds had opened for her when she started school, and she just wished he was there so she could tell him all about them.

034. Accuracy

As Roy Mustang watched her throw the knives at the center of the target, it occurred to him that she was at least as good with them as her father had been.

035. Fallen

The first time Elysia fell down and skinned her knee, Gracia wasn't sure who was more upset - Elysia, who was yelling her head off, or Maes, who had only witnessed the trauma.

036. Original

She never found out until she grew up that the fairy tales her father told her when she was little were actually based on things that had happened to him, her mother, and her Uncle Roy when they were in school and before the war.

037. Abstract

He had known for seven and a half months that he was going to be a father, but when Gracia's labor started, everything he'd read and everything they'd talked about vanished as panic set in.

038. Imperfection

She and her mother were the closest thing to perfection he had found in this imperfect world.

039. Let's Go

He hadn't been quite sure how she'd take to the tricycle when they'd first brought it home and put it together, but once she figured it out, she started following him everywhere on it.

040. Left Behind

Years later, she read her father's obituary, and it said that he left behind a wife and four-year-old daughter, but it didn't come anywhere near close to describing what she and her mother went through after his death.

041. Potential

She had the potential to be anything in the world she wanted to be, and he hoped he'd be there to see her do it.

042. Demon

Envy had taken the wife's form because he knew that she was one of the only people the Lieutenant Colonel couldn't raise a hand against, and because the girl child was too little to hold the gun steady.

043. Jump

Her afternoon jumping rope with the Elrics ended abruptly when he had to come and untie Edward from the tree in the back yard.

044. Punish

She listened in amazement as her mommy yelled at her daddy and Uncle Roy; she hadn't known that grown-ups could get into that kind of trouble.

045. Over

"Over, under, around, and through" may have made perfect sense to Daddy, but it still didn't tell her how to tie her shoes.

046. Deception

Her assignments for the Investigations division eventually took her into undercover work, and she was pleased and surprised when her commanding officer told her she was as good at it as her father had been.

047. Thunder

She thought the lightning was pretty, but when the sky started making those scary noises a few minutes later, she latched onto her daddy so fast his head spun.

048. Welcome

Though Alphonse had no memory of the brigadier general, Mrs. Hughes and her daughter had made it clear he was always welcome in their house.

049. Stop

She tried to stop them from putting Daddy in that hole in the ground, because he had too much to do and it was making Mommy cry.

050. Writers' Choice: Camera

She'd found the old camera in the front hall closet while she'd been helping her mother clean, and though she eventually acquired better and more modern equipment, she always treasured it because it belonged to her father.

-0-

A/N: There are more than a few references to things from my other story, Supplemental Rules and Regulations.


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